At 60 Sweeping Wind's rune should be changed to Cyclone. I agree with his assessment that - FOR SOLOING - mantras suck. Healing Mantra was great in the 30s but now that I'm in my 50s it's just not doing enough. The other mantras are decidedly lackluster and don't aid survivability enough. They're still pretty great in groups, though.

I'm squishy at the moment because I'm carrying more +Monster EXP than I should because I want to power up to 60 ASAP. Once I actually hit 60 I'll be swapping in tons of survivability.

Things I've found since 2.01) Don't even attempt to stay in melee. Watch your health, use your escapes early if you're taking focused damage. You're not a barb and you're very squishy.2) Dual Wield + lifesteal seems more useful than anything 2h. I'm >..< this close to just not upgrading weapons if they don't have a gem for lifesteal, unless they're a 15% or greater damage increase. 3) Learn which affixes will just fucking kill you. Mortar explodes, Orb and both goddamn ice one are deadlier than arcane or enchanted for me. The ice ones in particular are a problem because they kill your dodge leaving you pretty unarmored.

At 60 Sweeping Wind's rune should be changed to Cyclone. I agree with his assessment that - FOR SOLOING - mantras suck. Healing Mantra was great in the 30s but now that I'm in my 50s it's just not doing enough. The other mantras are decidedly lackluster and don't aid survivability enough. They're still pretty great in groups, though.

I'm squishy at the moment because I'm carrying more +Monster EXP than I should because I want to power up to 60 ASAP. Once I actually hit 60 I'll be swapping in tons of survivability.

Do you have a bunch of +spiritgen gear? I'm going to give this a shot, but worry that only being able to generate spirit by hitting things (unless I missed something) is going to be tricky when I'm trying not to be eaten by something scary. Those ice bomb things are awful...

I have a bunch of +spirit on hit but I'm low on passive gen with my current gear. Yeah, it can be a problem at times but I figure that's gear not build. If I can't stay in to kill it, that means I'm fighting above my current ability. Got my ass handed to me on torment, but was handling Master ok.

If you are having problems surviving it's most likely due to not having equipment that gives you health back. In the 2.0 world, these are life on hit (LoH), life on spirit spend, or life regen. Ween yourself off life steal now, if you have any.

If you like fast weapons, then finding items with LoH is a priority, along with skills that support that play style (Fist of Thunder + Sweeping Wind + Cyclone strike). I'd argue that the shield provided by mantra of healing is very effective with this build. You probably need Dashing Strike and Serenity with this build until you can enough LoH (to get yourself out of trouble).

If you like big-damage weapons (or you got a nice big damage weapon), then you want to look for equipment that has life on spirit spent and skills that spend spirit in big chunks (Crippling Wave + Wave of Light) and can give spirit back (Air Ally). This is a high-burst build. As such it's important to note that these skills have longer animation times and you are at risk of having a stun/knockup/etc knock you out of the cast. Play on an easier difficulty until you get the rhythm down.

The least effective/fun path is to just have a lot of life regen. This does free you quite a bit to try out whatever skills/weapons you want to play with, but typically you will be running more often (and therefore not killing).

The big thing was using Mantra of Healing. Before that, I felt far too squishy.

I also picked up anything to improve my healing. It was a rough go when I started her back up (I think she was around level 51 or so) and found pretty much all the gear on her, except the Manald Heal, which I got from Reg. Well, and the 2H is clearly pre-loot 2.0 as well.

With Merusk's build and dropping down to Expert, I now don't always die horribly to elites... and I think as I get better at using the mobility it provides this will continue to improve. Hopefully some shiny gear drops will then further improve my ability to survive. I miss the old post-launch days of being able to just wade into everything and destroy it in a whirlwind of slaughter though.

I can do Torment 1-2 no problem but that's because the game shat legendary items on me for a while. I goofed around and tried Torment 5 online with randoms with a full debuff-bot spec and I could solo big groups of non-champs if I wanted to spend several minutes killing them.

"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw

I have found (entirely unsurprisingly) that the new Barb I started and leveled from scratch is rocking the party far more than the old characters. Even a like for like comparison of new She-Barb to old Crusty Male Barb shows about 20k+damage and a hell of a lot more survivability.

There's an argument to be made for restarting or, if you don't fancy that, dissing all your gear and gearing up with friends.

Extreme, sure, but I get the feeling that the old gear has hidden stats called 'Suck' and 'Blow' and that you get +20 to each.

Yeah I started a fresh wizard instead of picking up my Lv25 one from before, and I think the steady drop of legendaries (which I had never seen one of ever in the old days) while I went from 1 to 60 helped make that character even more crazy over the top. Whereas the Monk I started from 38, replaced a bunch of gear with slightly better stuff from the blacksmith, and at 55 still have pretty bland gear.

Luckily my old wizard is doing just fine. He has some new stuff here and there, but also has some legacy stuff too. I'm sure anyone that has run with me will say that he is not deficient in the exploding shit category or the face tank elite packs category. Except for the Keywarden in the Oasis, fuck that dude and his slow time infinite mortar suck you into him bullshit.

I can solo T3 reliably and T4 if I am carefull with recent experimentation. Oddly enough t4 goes smoother when I go less defense more dps (right around 220k dps), and just backtrack the elite packs instead of getting up in their shit like I do in t3 with more defense (right around 187k dps).

T5 is just ridiculous. I'm not sure what type of gear I need to solo T5, but it certainly isn't dropping right now. I suspect I am going to have to completely rethink how I play my character and what type of gear I pick for T5.

Edit: Crap, I didn't realize this was the monk thread, I'm sorry for shitting it up with my wizzy stuff.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2014, 10:20:09 AM by Pennilenko »

"See? All of you are unique. And special. Like fucking snowflakes." -- Signe

Oddly that's the same wiz build i run. Your gear is massively better than mine.

All but the chest, wand, focus and one of the rings is new drops. I have a new chantodos wand, but didn't like the roll so am saving it for the enchanter when the expansion roles out.

Also I cannot stress how important the flat percentage boost to damage that comes on armor is. Like my shoulder is 14 percent boost to familiar, and boots are 15 percent to arcane orb. Those boosts do not get calculated in the dps window on the in game character page. I tested this by swapping out the gear for nearly identical primary stats and the tool tips do not see those boosts although you can see an amazing difference in performance without those boosts.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2014, 01:02:41 PM by Pennilenko »

"See? All of you are unique. And special. Like fucking snowflakes." -- Signe

I'm still using it at 59, because even though it's only 325 weapon damage because it's a lower level version, it's still goddamn amazing. Even if I swap in a head piece that gives me an extra 25% damage, it doesn't make up for that fireball. I expect this to be nerfed any day now.

So, on actual monk news, I started a wee female monk and set it to Expert and it's going fine. Now that I can see the way the monk builds, it's clear to me that they're slower and meant to be more deliberate compared to what they were pre-patch. Picking fights, tackling the proper target and having get out of dodge abilities seems kinda important now.

Not sure I like it very much compared to my mental powerhouse that I had, but at least I'm starting to figure out where they're coming from now.

I made it to 60 on Expert (from the mid-50s) with a more careful approach and less wade-in-the-middle (as I did back in the old days). Between getting the hang of using some of the mobility stuff to stay out of trouble and picking up some slightly better gear, things have been less painful.

I was having quite a lot of trouble levelling up on expert and kept having to go down to hard. I switched up my build to this and now I"m able to solo Master quite well with only a couple times of some kiting and difficulty (mostly when I'm getting swarmed by molten mobs)

I was having quite a lot of trouble levelling up on expert and kept having to go down to hard. I switched up my build to this and now I"m able to solo Master quite well with only a couple times of some kiting and difficulty (mostly when I'm getting swarmed by molten mobs)

I tried this build, as I was having a hell of a time with the old build on my old monk, and it's a huge improvement. Not as flashy as the WD, but it works.

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

Here is the build I'm using. Exploding Palm with The Flesh is Weak the best monk skill in 2.0 IMO. Between all the passive AOE damage you have going on, usually killing one minion/champion in a tough pack is enough to kill them all thanks to Palms damage. Any stragglers left can be used as new Exploding Palm targets to quickly clean up. The +20% damage to target from the rune is hard to pass up too. Cyclone strike with the Implosion rune ensures that everything is stacked for the explosion, and also combos really well with Sweeping Wind and the Vulture Claw Kick from Lashing Tail Kick.

I still like the healing mantra because the active shield can be spammed for tough packs. The only part of the build I'm not 100% on is the passives. It feels like there aren't clear winners for monks (besides One With Everything) like there are for other classes.